


Forgetful Snow

by Karis_Artemisia_Judith



Category: Frozen (2013)
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Isolation, Light Angst, Sibling Love, Sister-Sister Relationship, snow sisters
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-16
Updated: 2014-07-16
Packaged: 2018-02-09 02:41:38
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 730
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1965870
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Karis_Artemisia_Judith/pseuds/Karis_Artemisia_Judith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>April is the cruelest month for young Elsa.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Forgetful Snow

**Forgetful Snow**

> APRIL is the cruellest month, breeding   
> Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing   
> Memory and desire, stirring   
> Dull roots with spring rain.   
> Winter kept us warm, covering   
> Earth in forgetful snow, feeding   
> A little life with dried tubers.
> 
> (excerpt from  _The Wasteland_ , by T.S. Eliot)

April was the cruelest month.

Elsa wanted to hate the winter, to hate the reminder of what she was all around her, as the snow gathered on both sides of her window sill, as frost painted both sides of the panes, but she couldn’t. In the winter, no one questioned the unnatural chill that surrounded her room. In the winter, she never found herself frantically scraping frost from the window before someone noticed it, or sweeping snow into the fireplace until the grate was a mess of wet ash. And in the winter, her sister was trapped indoors after the early sunset, and lingered in the hallway, playing with her dolls, crashing up and down on her bike ( _their_  bike—but Elsa had never touched it).

 

Sometimes Anna knocked.

Elsa dreaded those knocks. She felt each one thud hollowly in her chest, as surely as if her sister’s fist was rapping at her breastbone, knuckles bruising with every thump. Yet Elsa cherished each painful knock, because it meant she wasn’t forgotten. And she loved to hear Anna play. She sat at the door, her ear pressed against the wood, listening intently to every sound, working out just what Anna was doing—that crash was the suit of armor in the corner being knocked down again, and the whir of wheels meant it had been the bicycle. The steady  _bump bump_  was Anna’s ball, probably leaving dents in the plaster. The sound of Anna yelling “Clang! Clang!  _Tiiinng!_  Clang!” and stomping over the carpet meant she was waving her toy sword, fighting imaginary opponents. Elsa knew every adventure, every game, as intimately as a blind woman knows the paths to navigate inside her own house.

But in April the snow began to melt. The sun began to shine, longer and longer each day, blazing through the windows, and the garden erupted in green and yellow and red and pink, the warm colors of fire and summer and Anna—and Anna was there among them, running gleefully through the grass, relieved to be free of the castle, to have this small stretch of extra sky.

Elsa stayed behind in the small world of her four walls, watching from the window, her hands too hot, palms sweaty inside her gloves. She could remember, she could remember too clearly how it had felt to be out there, where everything was fresh and new and alive. April was so cruel. She could see her sister—Anna was getting so  _tall_ , her legs were so long, and her braids were past her shoulders—see her, but not hear her, and in the summer months the knocks would grow less and less frequent. Anna loved to be outside, in the sunshine, in the heat, and she wouldn’t want to play in a stuffy hallway outside a silent door. The silence in Elsa’s room was absolute.

She stared out of the window, feeling the ache in her chest, the absence of Anna’s knock, the stirring of something that wanted to grow but was smothered and dying. The pain of spring was intense. It was too much. In winter she had just enough, just enough respite from the constant fear of exposing herself, just enough of her sister’s presence, just enough to feel warm in the cold. But in the spring something in her wanted to reach out, wanted to break free, wanted to see and hear and feel her sister all at once, to stand in the grass without worrying that it would wither under her feet, to scamper through the rain as Anna did, without worrying that it would turn to biting pellets of hail against her skin. In the spring she wanted  _more_  than just enough.

Down in the garden Anna looked up, her eyes searching, and waved. Elsa knew she couldn’t be seen—the window was too high, the sun too bright—but she stepped back anyway, stepped away from the warm light, and from the shadows inside her room she waved back.

April was so cruel. She wished that she had winter to keep her warm. 


End file.
